On february 20th the Identitarian Movement wants to hold a rally at Neuer Platz in Klagenfurt/Celovec against the so called “asylum madness” to spread their racist hate speech and horror scenarios about the end of civilisation.

This right-wing movement originated in France, where, after the ban of the neo nazi group Unité radicale, the Jeunesses identitaires was founded in 2002. A year later, the Bloc Identitaire emerged from this group, led by former Front National cadre Fabrice Robert.

Following the increasing repression on the neo nazi scene (eg. the ban of the nazi website Alpen-Donau-Info and the trial against its makers), the Identitarian Movement established itself in Austria in 2012. The roots of many cadres in the neo nazi scene isn‘t even denied, but labelled a ‚personal mistake‘. Many Identitarians come from the pangermanic nationalist male students‘ associations, which helps explain the similarities between the movement and those groups.

While the far right has been distancing itself (more or less credibly) from National Socialism for quite a while, the Identitarians deny the affiliation with the right-wing scene altogether in order to widen their potential. They use symbols from popular culture (eg the movie ‚300′) and copied from the left in order to present themselves as a completely new movement. On top of that, they try to hide their racism behind seemingly positive terms such as the preservation of “cultural identity”. By talking about the “islamisation of Europe”, the cultural bonds to one’s roots and a ethnical sense of “identity”, which is disguised as a cultural one, they follow the concept of ethnopluralism.

We can identify the Identitarians as openly far-right by their superordination of the “people” (in an ethnical defintion) as an “organic community” above the indidual. The term of culture replaces the tabooized word “race” – but what they mean is just the same racist claim of superiority. The so called natural society of homogenic racial (“cultural”) descent is seen as threatened by decay. The Identitarians see this threat as coming less from foreign individuals such as muslims, but more from the destructive forces of liberalism and multiculturalism. By “culture”, a group of people is said to have an organic character, from which all acts of this group supposedly originate as an expression of this culture – free of any internal contradictions.

With the culturalisation comes the naturalisation and eternalisation of social behaviour – but what hides behind the acts of “us” and “them” is nothing but the capitalist function of said groups. Social conflicts are being labelled as cultural ones. Following the identitarian logic, the difference between people doesn‘t come from their social situation, but their cultural background. The excessive use of war and fighting metaphers and the proclamation of themselves as the last generation able to stop the downfall of the decadent West speaks for a generally militant stance.

This is not just about criticising and pointing out rallies of obviously far right or neo-fascist groups such as the Identitarian movement and doing our best to stop them, but we also have to state that the racism coming from ideologies such as the ones of Identitarians, PdV, Pegida and the likes of them and which is evident there in its full horror isn‘t just a phenomenon of an isolated minority on the edge of our society. What it is scandalized when it comes from obviously far right groups has its origins in the middle and the majority of this society. The lines between conservatism and the far right are blurred. Still, the identification with ethnicity, nation, fatherland and its borders has a high priority in the values of the Austrian population. When someone identifies with a border, it goes without saying that he/she is inclined to protect the content of said borders against everything from the outside. If a country like Austria is suddenly confronted with a number of people who, by their standards, aren‘t part of the Austrian collective and still claim their right to live within its borders, it’s a sad consequence of nationalism that the wish to protect the safe homeland against “the foreigners” is on the rise. With some people, this results in so called “worries and fears”, with others in arson attacks against asylum shelters, violent attacks on refugees or, such as on February 20th in a far right rally that has the goal of increasing the seemingly harmless worry and fear within the population.
Ideologies of inequality and the mechanisms of segregation and discrimination they create are determinded by the capitalist society we all have to live in and which makes a coexistence without fear impossible by its structure based on violence.
That’s exactly why we see a consequent anti-racism as anti-national. Far right movements use racism which is a key element of nationalist thinking. If Identitarians call for a stop of “mass imigration”, we oppose by defying all categories of ethnicity, nation and the society which makes all of this possible.

Let us attack movements such as the Identitarians wherever they show up, stop their rallies, confront them with loud criticism and do anything necessary to stop the racist mob of today committing the pogromes of tomorrow!
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